So, how about them Hyenas?

Anet, can we please get that very nice looking healthy Hyena model for our loveable laughing "canine" friends? I'm tired of walking around with the most malnourished looking pet in the game when I run with a Hyena, couldn't be too much to ask to just, swap the model for the juvenile Hyena with the POF Hyena skins.

Or at the very least create a second Juvenile Hyena using the new model so we can choose which one to take...

Anyone else in agreement?

"But my children sing to me. Listen. They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family. As their mother, I have to grant them their wish."

@Fluffball.8307 said:
Hyenas are more closely related to cats. Main priority should be getting them moved from the canine family to the feline family.

Yeah this has been brought up in the past and really don't think/remember if the devs answered to that, but I wouldn't prioritise it ahaha

I mean it is closer to cats but it does share some traits with canine but I get what you mean - its more cat than it is dog.

Moving from canine to felone would also drastically change hyena's skills: the auto attack and the 2 family skills, so we'd lose both an extra hard CC and an extra soft CC

What I find funny is that most if not all hostile wolves use a skill that calls an ally, they simply could've made different breeds of juvenile wolves, one with an ally calling howl and the other with the fear-inducing terrifying owl

Best solution would be to create new canine with ally summon skill (double cripple and double knockdown!) and move hyena to feline and keep its ally summoning skill (double bleeds and vuln!)

@Durzlla.6295 said:
Or at the very least create a second Juvenile Hyena using the new model so we can choose which one to take...

I'd be down with this. A Juvenile Spotted Hyena with normal power stats with a Howl that taunts. An alternative could be to "Charm" a Spotted Hyena, but it just swaps the skin and profile image of the Hyena. If a player wants to use the original Hyena skin/pic, they just re-charm a core Juvenile Hyena. Though, I prefer getting another Hyena (with normal stats).

(Also lets not forget that hyenas have unique stats compared to other canine pets - they have half the power values!)

Yes, this bugged me a lot, like THE perk of using the Hyena is having the two bodies for the extra CC, and soulbeast just kinda negates that.

@Fluffball.8307 said:
Hyenas are more closely related to cats. Main priority should be getting them moved from the canine family to the feline family.

They may be closer related to cats than dogs genetically, but they are pack animals, and they behave/hunt closer to dogs do, so i'd argue that giving them feline skills would be very strange, if you want to really split hairs the Hyena is mostly closely related to otters and mongooses and as such should have completely different skills than both canines and felines if we're deciding their skills on a purely genetic level.

"But my children sing to me. Listen. They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family. As their mother, I have to grant them their wish."

Just to set the record straight. Hyenas are not members of the dog or cat families. Instead, they are so unique that they have a family all their own, Hyaenidae. There are four members of the Hyaenidae family: the striped hyena, the “giggly” spotted hyena, the brown hyena, and the aardwolf (it's a hyena, not a wolf).

@Durzlla.6295 said:
if you want to really split hairs the Hyena is mostly closely related to otters and mongooses and as such should have completely different skills than both canines and felines if we're deciding their skills on a purely genetic level.

+1 for the new hyena models!! I loved seeing the new hyenas in the demo and immediately checked if the ranger pet had perhaps been swapped out for the new model. No luck so far, but perhaps it can happen? It would be really awesome!

+1 on getting a healthy hyena option. I've been running a hyena pet since my hunter in WoW, and when I switched over to GW2 several years ago, I was so happy to see hyena as a pet option for my ranger... Until I actually saw the poor thing. Now that there's a healthy looking spotted hyena skin in the game, can't we just get some juveniles?

+1 too on getting a healthy Hyena skin but.... They shall really adress the ability of hyena and give it back half of the power canine type from 974 to 1868. And the hyena that is summoned shall have the same stats as our proper hyena and get bonus from skills that interact with it (weapon attack, the new shou...command and even the bonus traits from Beastmastery traitline ) . Because actually the summoned hyena is nearly pointless for damage and only usefull for a Knock down of 2 sec with a CD of 30sec for a summoned hyena who live only 40 sec...

@Gabrya.6297 said:
+1 too on getting a healthy Hyena skin but.... They shall really adress the ability of hyena and give it back half of the power canine type from 974 to 1868. And the hyena that is summoned shall have the same stats as our proper hyena and get bonus from skills that interact with it (weapon attack, the new shou...command and even the bonus traits from Beastmastery traitline ) . Because actually the summoned hyena is nearly pointless for damage and only usefull for a Knock down of 2 sec with a CD of 30sec for a summoned hyena who live only 40 sec...

The hyena was nerfed to being half power so that when it’s out the hyena does as much damage as canines, and when it’s out in any scenario it can be buffed (IE Warhorn ranger or spirits) the hyena doesn’t immediately outperform every other pet we have.

Granted this was also back in the glory days of no limit to how many hyenas you could have out since there was no duration, it was just a “until it died or you left combat.” Sort of thing.

I do think at this point in time though they should lower the CD on the hyena summon to like 20s, but add a hard cap to the number of hyenas we can have out, cause currently we can get 3 for a brief like 4s period when traited appropriately. This would allow the Hyena to be useable, instead of just dead in the water.

"But my children sing to me. Listen. They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family. As their mother, I have to grant them their wish."

The hyena was nerfed to being half power so that when it’s out the hyena does as much damage as canines, and when it’s out in any scenario it can be buffed (IE Warhorn ranger or spirits) the hyena doesn’t immediately outperform every other pet we have.

Granted this was also back in the glory days of no limit to how many hyenas you could have out since there was no duration, it was just a “until it died or you left combat.” Sort of thing.

I do think at this point in time though they should lower the CD on the hyena summon to like 20s, but add a hard cap to the number of hyenas we can have out, cause currently we can get 3 for a brief like 4s period when traited appropriately. This would allow the Hyena to be useable, instead of just dead in the water.

yeah i understand but halve the power of our hyena didn't bring her to the damage canine are usually doing when the summoned hyena is out. And therefore the summoned hyena shall not be a "get to normal power ability" but normally a buff to our proper hyena .

Finally its not working because the summoned hyena does like 150 damage each auto unbuffed at lvl 80 versus a Sand Shark in POF and our proper hyena does like 500 damage each auto to this same enemy. So it didn't bring our hyena to the other canine damage , Alpin Wolf for example does like 950 to this Sand Shark...

650 vs 950... thats 32 % less from other canines...(+ it goes even wider with buffs because our summoned hyena can't be buffed by beastmastery etc...)

The hyena was nerfed to being half power so that when it’s out the hyena does as much damage as canines, and when it’s out in any scenario it can be buffed (IE Warhorn ranger or spirits) the hyena doesn’t immediately outperform every other pet we have.

Granted this was also back in the glory days of no limit to how many hyenas you could have out since there was no duration, it was just a “until it died or you left combat.” Sort of thing.

I do think at this point in time though they should lower the CD on the hyena summon to like 20s, but add a hard cap to the number of hyenas we can have out, cause currently we can get 3 for a brief like 4s period when traited appropriately. This would allow the Hyena to be useable, instead of just dead in the water.

yeah i understand but halve the power of our hyena didn't bring her to the damage canine are usually doing when the summoned hyena is out. And therefore the summoned hyena shall not be a "get to normal power ability" but normally a buff to our proper hyena .

Finally its not working because the summoned hyena does like 150 damage each auto unbuffed at lvl 80 versus a Sand Shark in POF and our proper hyena does like 500 damage each auto to this same enemy. So it didn't bring our hyena to the other canine damage , Alpin Wolf for example does like 950 to this Sand Shark...

650 vs 950... thats 32 % less from other canines...(+ it goes even wider with buffs because our summoned hyena can't be buffed by beastmastery etc...)

Are you sure? I haven’t checked in a while but last I did an unbuffed Hyena did the same damage as the summoned Hyena which ended up totaling to what other canines do (actually more because the other abilities, but autos were even).

It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve stealth nerfed Hyenas for literally no reason so I wouldn’t even be surprised if our summoned one now only does 150. And if that’s the case, yeah just buff the normal Hyena and have the summon for effectively just a second body and more CC

"But my children sing to me. Listen. They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family. As their mother, I have to grant them their wish."

@ProtoMarcus.7649 said:
I do agree the model needs to be changed, as Ranger it is my duty to take care of my pets, no way they should look so unhealthy!

I am very much in agreement with the OP, and ProtoMarcus drives the point home. I love hyenas, and it makes me sad that the one my asura ranger cares for... doesn't look cared for. Like... at all.

I hear that! It’s the main reason i hate the Druid pet nerf, implying I don’t care for my pets and now they’re weakened or something; I hate it.

Yeah, I know WHY they nerfed Druid pets, it’s because they wanted to limit a tanky healer doing damage while speccing tanky, which is fine.

But I really wish they would’ve just played it off like “your pet has followed in your footsteps and has become less aggressive” sorta thing and just nerfed the damage and left the tankyness alone, or if they lowered the pets stats across the board as they did, to then give it some synergy with our avatar state, even if it’s just them getting revived upon entering or exiting it.

"But my children sing to me. Listen. They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family. As their mother, I have to grant them their wish."